Formal and Informal Social Support Systems in Northern Italy: A Regional Assessment

The aim of this chapter is to highlight that the societies of the Old Regime presented a heterogeneous and pluralistic character. This stemmed from the presence of intermediate bodies between the central government and the single individual. The establishment of the local State, which began during the fifteenth century, did not eliminate this complexity, which persisted into the late 1700s. We examine the development of social support systems in the early modern period in the rural areas of the regional/city-states of northern Italy. This investigation achieves two main purposes: first, it allows researchers to understand the concrete role played by welfare and micro-credit in the political and socio-economic panorama of rural northern Italy; secondly, it analyses the extent to which the formation of a more or less structured support system influenced the establishment of local identity and the rooting of individuals. It is within this context that a complex and dynamic polyhedrality of formal and informal social support systems developed in rural areas. These systems characterized an extraordinary period of diversified strategies for providing social support to the needy.